The widespread availability of personal computers at low cost has led to a situation where the general public increasingly demands access to the Internet and other computer networks. A similar demand exists for wireless communications in that the public increasingly demands that cellular telephones be available at low cost with ubiquitous coverage.
As a result of its familiarity with these two technologies, the general population now increasingly wishes to not only access computer networks, but to access such networks in wireless fashion as well. This is of particularly concern to users of portable computers, laptop computers, hand-held personal digital assistants (PDAs) and the like, who would prefer and indeed now expect to be able to access such networks with the same convenience they have grown accustomed to when using their cellular telephones.
Unfortunately, there still is no widely available satisfactory solution for providing low cost, broad geographical coverage, high speed access to the Internet and other networks using the existing wireless infrastructure which has been built at some expense to support cellular telephony. Indeed, at the present time, the users of wireless modems that operate with the existing cellular telephone network often experience a difficult time when trying to, for example, access the Internet to view web pages. The same frustration level is felt in any situation when attempting to perform other tasks that require the transfer of relatively large amounts of data between computers.
This is at least in part due to the architecture of cellular telephone networks, which were originally designed to support voice communications, as compared to the communications protocols in use for the Internet, which were originally optimized for wireline communication. In particular, the protocols used for connecting computers over wireline networks do not lend themselves well to efficient transmission over standard wireless connections.
For example, cellular networks were originally designed to deliver voice grade services, having an information bandwidth of approximately three kilohertz (kHz). While techniques exist for communicating data over such radio channels at the rate of 9600 kilobits per second (kbps), such low frequency channels do not lend themselves directly to transmitting data at rates of 28.8 kbps or even the 56.6 kbps that is now commonly available using inexpensive wireline modems. These rates are presently thought to be the minimum acceptable data rates for Internet access.
This situation is true for advanced digital wireless communication protocols as well, such as Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA). Even though such systems convert input voice information to digital signals, they too were designed to provide communication channels at voice grade bandwidth. As a result, they use communication channels that may exhibit a bit error rate (BER) as high as one in one thousand bits in multipath fading environments. While such a bit error rate is perfectly acceptable for the transmission or voice signals, it becomes cumbersome for most data transmission environments.
Unfortunately, in wireless environments, access to channels by multiple subscribers is expensive and there is competition for them. Whether the multiple access is provided by the traditional Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA) using analog modulation on a group of radio carriers, or by newer digital modulation schemes that permit sharing of a radio carrier using Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) or Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA), the nature of the cellular radio spectrum is such that it is a medium that is expected to be shared. This is quite dissimilar to the traditional environment for data transmission, in which the wireline medium is relatively inexpensive to obtain, and is therefore not typically intended to be shared.
On the other hand, wireless local area networks (W-LANs) have been developed to allow communications between users over a relatively small range without the need for a physical connection, or alternatively, to allow communications between a wired LAN and wireless users. W-LANs typically have a much smaller range and higher data rates.
A newly accepted standard, IEEE 802.11, specifies a protocol for the media access control (MAC) and physical (PHY) layers of a wireless LAN. As with cellular systems, a W-LAN connection can be handed off from one area of coverage (a xe2x80x9cbasic service setxe2x80x9d in IEEE 802.11 parlance) to the next. A good description of wireless LANs, and the IEEE 802.11 standard in particular, may be found in Geier, J., Wireless LANs (Macmillan Technical Publishing, 1999).
Wireless LANs are generally private networks, that is they are installed, owned, and maintained by a private party, such as a business, educational institution or home owner. Such networks are therefore generally cheaper to access than long range networks which utilize shared public access frequencies licensed by a government authority to complete a connection, and which generally require subscriber fees.
In addition, W-LANs typically operate at a much faster data rate than the long range network. However, as the word xe2x80x9clocalxe2x80x9d implies, the range of a W-LAN is rather limitedxe2x80x94typically tens or hundreds of feet, as compared to several miles for a long range cellular telephone network.
It would therefore be desirable to have a device which can automatically select the cheaper and faster W-LAN when possible, e.g., when within its range, and to resort to the long range cellular network when access to the W-LAN is not possible or practical. Previously, two devices would have been required, one for accessing the W-LAN and one for accessing the long range network. At best, these two devices could fit into two slots in, for example, a laptop computer, requiring the user to select, either through software or hardware, which device, and hence, which network to access. The user might typically then have to disconnect one of the devices to install the other, and manually reconfigure the computer.
The present invention, on the other hand, is a single device which connects directly to a W-LAN using a protocol such as IEEE 802.11 when such a connection is possible, and automatically reverts to connecting to the long range network only when out of range of the W-LAN base stations.
Thus, the same equipment can be used without any reconfiguration and even without the knowledge of the user. For example, when the user is on a company campus and within range of the less expensive, faster W-LAN, the user""s laptop or PDA automatically communicates with the W-LAN. If the user leaves the office, for example, for lunch, or at the end of the day, heads home, the same laptop or PDA, being out of range of the W-LAN, will automatically communicate instead with the wider range, more expensive cellular network.
Therefore, the present invention is also a method which uses a first wireless digital communication path and a second wireless digital communication path for coupling data communication signals with a local wireless transceiver at a first site. The second digital communication path provides wider coverage and a slower communication rate than the first digital communication path. The local wireless transceiver conducts wireless communications with a remote wireless transceiver at a second site.
One of the wireless communication path is selected upon a request to establish a communication session between the first and second sites by first determining whether the first wireless digital communication path is available.
In one embodiment, the first wireless communication path comprises a wireless LAN connection, preferably using carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA), preferably according to the IEEE 802.11 specification. The second wireless communication path comprises a cellular connection. Access costs associated with the first wireless communication path are smaller than access costs associated with the second wireless communication path. Preferably, access to the first wireless communication path is essentially free, excluding expenses such as set-up and maintenance costs, while access to the second wireless communication path can be subscription-based.
The local wireless transceiver can be a single transceiver which is capable of communicating with a second site or destination over both wireless communication paths. Alternatively, the local wireless transceiver can comprise two transceivers, one for each communication path.
In one embodiment, the first wireless communication path is a private network. Conversely, the second wireless communication path can be a public network, in which channels are allocated centrally.
In one embodiment, the step of determining whether the first wireless communication mode is available is performed by passive scanning, such as by detecting a beacon signal. In another embodiment, active scanning is used, for example, by transmitting a probe request message and detecting a probe response message in response to the probe request which indicates the presence of the first wireless communication path. In yet another embodiment, determining whether the first wireless communication path is available comprises simply detecting activity on the first wireless communication path.
If the first wireless digital communication mode is available, a communication session between the first and second sites using the first wireless digital communication path is established.
On the other hand, if the first wireless digital communication path is not available, a communication session between the first and second sites using the second wireless digital communication path is established. In this case, the local wireless transceiver is controlled to make it appear to the second wireless digital communication path as though the bandwidth were continuously available during the communication session, irrespective of any actual need to transport data communication signals between said first and second sites. In the absence of such a need to transport data communication signals between the first and second sites, the bandwidth is made available for wireless communication by other wireless transceivers.
In one preferred embodiment, the second wireless digital communication path is provided by establishing a logical connection using a higher layer protocol, such as a network layer protocol, from a subscriber unit, such as may be connected to a portable computer node, to an intended peer node, such as another computer. The network layer logical connection is made through a wireless channel which provides a physical layer connection between the portable computer node, through a base station, and the intended peer node. In response to relatively low utilization of the wireless channel, the physical layer channel is released while maintaining the appearance of a network layer connection to the higher level protocols.
This has two consequences. First, it frees wireless channel bandwidth for use by other subscriber units, without the overhead associated with having to set up an end to end connection each time that data needs to be transferred. In addition, and perhaps more importantly, by allocating wireless channels only when needed, the bandwidth necessary to provide a temporary but very high speed connection is available at critical times. These may occur, for example, when a particular subscriber unit requests that a web page file be downloaded from the Internet.
More specifically, the technique, which is here called spoofing, involves stripping off the lower layers of the protocol while reformatting higher layer messages for transmission using a more efficient CDMA based encapsulated protocol.